Reading Autobiographical Comics: A Framework for Educational Settings

Abstract

Without the generous support of the University of Salzburg this publication would not have been possible in its present form. Most of all, I appreciate the opportunity to make my book available via Open Access, which means that anyone who is interested in teaching literature, comics and auto/biography can download it for free. I had access to all the (re)sources I could ask for through our library service and I was able to attend all the conferences I was interested in, especially those of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor), whose fellow members I want to thank for all their support throughout the years. The Department of English and American Studies was instrumental in co-funding the print publication. Extensive feedback from students has helped me to test and clarify the stages of reading that I present in the second part, but also to evaluate existing theories and to question concepts I took for granted. I am especially grateful to Craig Thompson for allowing me to reproduce so many panels and pages from Blankets (2003). Finally, I extend my gratitude to my family and especially to my wife Eva, who has been incredibly patient and supportive throughout the whole process. between lessons with intensive reading tasks for the classroom that encourage an ongoing dialogue with the text, but especially amongst students.Another important adjustment was a greater focus on genre. The ubiquity of autobiographical material in alternative comics is undeniable, as evidenced by the most widely discussed and popular texts, such as Art Spiegelman's MAUS, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis or Craig Thompson's Blankets. It seemed inappropriate to merely highlight the medium's unique narrative features without addressing the key concerns of its two major genres, superheroes and autobiography, which are singled out in Randy Duncan, Matthew J. Smith and Paul Levitz's The Power of Comics as requiring special attention (cf. 2015: 191-227; 229-62). Both have histories, influence creative choices and shape readers' expectations. Accordingly, the last part of this study is dedicated to 'autographics' , Gillian Whitlock's term for autobiographical work in the comics medium (cf. 2006), which is ideally suited to address questions of authenticity, representation and fluid identities.Over the years, it has become feasible to base a reader-response approach to graphic literature on related theories in comics studies (cf. e.g.

Perspectives on Teacher Education and Development

“…Today we know that comics are a multimodal text, characterized by both visual and verbal art (Batič, 2016). Comics are increasingly included in schools -as art literature, as a didactic step, as a didactic method, and as such they are explored in school settings: in language and literature teaching (e.g., Kerneža & Košir, 2016;Reid & Moses, 2020), visual literacy (e.g., Golding & Verrier, 2020;Wallner, 2020), in combining language and/or literature with other areas (e.g., Dallacqua, 2020;Oppolzer, 2020), or entirely in other subject areas (e.g., Azamain et al, 2020;Chu & Toh, 2020;McGarr, 2020;McGarr, Gavaldon & Saez de Adana, 2020;Phoon etc., 2020;Zhang, 2019), etc.…”

The Role of the Identification and Promotion of Student Teachers’ Character Strengths in Their Professional Development

“…Today we know that comics are a multimodal text, characterized by both visual and verbal art (Batič, 2016). Comics are increasingly included in schools -as art literature, as a didactic step, as a didactic method, and as such they are explored in school settings: in language and literature teaching (e.g., Kerneža & Košir, 2016;Reid & Moses, 2020), visual literacy (e.g., Golding & Verrier, 2020;Wallner, 2020), in combining language and/or literature with other areas (e.g., Dallacqua, 2020;Oppolzer, 2020), or entirely in other subject areas (e.g., Azamain et al, 2020;Chu & Toh, 2020;McGarr, 2020;McGarr, Gavaldon & Saez de Adana, 2020;Phoon etc., 2020;Zhang, 2019), etc.…”